


Heart of Hearts

by SilverTsuki



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Did I Mention Angst?, Eventual Happy Ending, Existential Crisis, Gen, theres some angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-11
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-07-22 23:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7458510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverTsuki/pseuds/SilverTsuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They need seven lights to combat the darkness.  Where's Sora?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 5/15/17

He has no idea how long they’ve been here.

Castle Oblivion is just as convoluted and blankly menacing as Riku remembers it. Over the course of their trip here on the Gummi Ship, Sora at the controls, Riku had taken the moments not spent backseat driving to remember the last time he’d been here, rueful about how small changes in the sequence of events could have saved them all a lot of trouble. He occasionally catches sight of a similarly pensive look on Sora’s face, but its rare, and Riku brushes it off. Sora had been a little quieter lately; despite being told that he had been to Castle Oblivion before, he couldn’t remember any of his time spent there. Kairi is more chatty than usual in the face of their combined brooding, and without fail always seems to be able prod Sora into sharing stories of some of his adventures. 

Now that they have an idea of what they’re looking for the Castle seems to make itself an active adversary, constantly switching its doors and passages in a way that seems to keep dumping them out back at the entrance hall. Spookier still, they start losing memories. 

They forget in which of their pockets they left some important trinket, or the precise color of their mother’s hair. Sora forgets the sound of Donald’s voice, and Kairi has to be helped with doing up her shoelaces. When Riku stops remembering their names, or anyone else’s, they all stop wasting time with breaks – but then they wake up not knowing how they came to be asleep. Some memories are easy to sense the loss of, but others, as Kairi points out, are not. They could easily be forgetting they’re forgetting.

Despite none of them remembering why they were even exploring such a confusing place, Sora keeps them on track. A gentle sort of tug on his heart tells him which way to go.

When they finally find the door it takes them all by surprise. It was located, at least for now, somewhere between the first and second floors if Riku had to guess. To reach it they had been required to travel to the eighth floor, go up the third set of stairs down to the fifth floor, and make a very disturbing jump that Riku could almost swear had turned them upside down and opposite towards the direction they had started walking in. The actual door, unobtrusive in a hallway of equally identical doors, would have been easy to miss without Sora’s heart leading the way.

Before Kairi can completely lose it (she hates the way a place so empty can be so immaculately clean), Sora blinks, gives a little “Oh,” and without fanfare turns on the spot to push through a door that had seemed to helpfully change places with one far down to the right.

The room they enter feels nothing like the rest of the castle, although without doubt they are certainly still within it. Dust coats everything (Kairi breathes in relief), filtering lazily through the air and sparkling in the light coming in through two large, beautifully arrayed stained glass windows. The myriad colors converge to fall upon a set of three thrones on raised pedestals, their halo of multicolored light framing the comparatively inconspicuous boy asleep in the middle chair. Sora immediately crosses the golden room with a suddenly remembered Glide to take Ventus’s hand, leaving Riku and Kairi to make their way across in a more cautious way. 

Ventus looks exactly like Roxas. Or, as Kairi points out, Roxas looks like him. Sora doesn’t weigh in on the matter, choosing to instead roll one of Ventus’s hands between his as though he can’t physically stand to stop. Riku thinks again how the lack of trademark chatter has been bothering him during their whole excursion. Kairi, of course, has also noticed – when she catches Riku’s eye she nods towards the pair and bites her lip.

“The last time Sora released a trapped heart…” She trails off, expression equal parts worry and guilt. Riku nods as Sora pats ineffectually at Ventus’s mussed hair. This was something they had been worried about, when they remembered to be, for the whole trip. 

“There’s other ways than that, I’m sure.” He makes his voice low and confident, head tilting to the side to let his bangs slide out of his vision. “We know a lot more now, and we’re just here to pick him up anyway.”

“I mean, that’s true.” Sora finally pipes up, making both his friends jump. Neither had been certain Sora was listening, with the intent way he had been staring at Ventus’s face. “The problem is that Ventus only has half a heart. I think that probably means I do, too, on my own. He’s always been here,” his spare hand tightens at the front of his jacket, clutching at lapels positioned directly above a star-shaped scar few know is there. “Since I was born even, I guess. I can’t just…release him? He’s…we’re…its like we only have the one. Or the halves, I guess.”

Sora tore his gaze away from Ventus to look his friends full in the face. “I think I have to…give it back.”

Kairi catches at Riku’s sleeve, as though to steady herself. In all this golden light, her wine-red hair floats ethereally around her face. “Sora, c’mon. That’s way too rash. Think of Roxas…you were running around without him for a while. Hearts can regrow, repair themselves. Like with the nobodies.”

Sora is shaking his head, sad. “Roxas and I weren’t okay. I wasn’t really me without him, and…I don’t know why, but I don’t think Ventus can fix his heart. It was…torn apart, not just taken like when a nobody and heartless gets made.”

Sora turned back to Ventus, somehow managing to look both optimistic and vulnerable at once.

“They never got a chance to really live, you know? I want to give them that chance. Because of Ventus and Roxas and all the other people who share a piece of my heart…I almost feel like its not even mine to keep. All the friends I’ve made…everything I got to experience…I want them to feel those things too. I think…I have to do this. It’d be selfish not to, wouldn’t it? You guys understand, don’t you?” He nearly sounds like he’s pleading with them. He might be.

Riku immediately tells him that he doesn’t understand – but he does. Of course he does, because this is Sora. He’s a self-sacrificing idiot if there ever was one, and Riku knows Sora will do it again. He clenches his fists, opening and closing his mouth as he visibly swallows down words that will solve nothing. In the weeks and months prior to this moment it had been plain that something had been gnawing at Sora, eating at him in small doses. Riku wishes now he didn’t know what it was, foolishly hoping for one ironic moment that the magic of Castle Oblivion will take this one memory away.

“Talking about this right now is pointless. We need to get out of here, get Ventus back to the Tower – and Aqua. Then we can decide what to do.”

Sora’s shoulders slump, but he quickly straightens back up. He was forever trying to make sure his friends knew that everything would be okay. His shaking hands give him away.

“We need their lights. I can’t be the reason they aren’t here…I can’t be the reason everything we’ve done to save the worlds goes up in smoke! I wasn’t,” his voice finally breaks, just a little bit. “…I wasn’t chosen, like he was. It has to be him.” 

Sora turns back again, maybe to get one last look of them, and its Hollow Bastion all over again. “I was just the delivery boy, after all, I guess.” His laugh sounds wrong, rings falsely in all the quiet. 

The flash of the keyblade sends Kairi lunging forward, Riku not a moment behind, but Sora is faster than they are. He raises it, plunges it into his chest. Neither of them is fast enough to stop him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Update 5/15/17: Fixed some cosmetic errors

In the next few minutes all noise seems to have been sucked right back into the rest of the castle, leaving only stunned silence. Though Kairi and Riku had both thrown themselves forward, the light of Sora’s magic only twinkles away from between their fingers to mingle with the light pulsing around Ventus and his chair.

Kairi drops, shocked and gasping, to the floor beside Riku’s left foot. His shoe digs into her leg almost painfully, and as her outstretched hand follows a particularly bright trail of light its all she can think about. Because she definitely isn’t thinking about Sora’s goofy shoes, or his smile –

Riku stands stock still beside her, still reaching out as though he could pull Sora back out from thin air. He looks hollow, mouth moving against words that refuse to come out.

Sora thought this would help. _He thought this would help._

The light from the throne convalesces then pulses; as one they turn to look, but Ventus hasn’t moved an inch. It is instead the room around them that seems different; every color seems to fluctuate as the light gently glowing from Ventus’s chest ebbs and flows. Kairi feels something within her change as well, slotting into her chest like a stone.

Without warning there is a distant boom and the room begins to rumble and shake.  
“Riku.” He blinks at the sound of his name, at her hard tone. “Riku, we need to leave.”

“But…” He turns to look, again, at the empty space in front of them. Kairi does not move to do the same, has already pulled one of Ventus’s arms out and over her shoulders.

“We’ve gotta go. Help me with him.” Riku obeys, seemingly numb. After adjusting Ventus carefully across their shoulders they begin to move, focusing hard on their footing as the shaking and grumbling of the castle slowly increases. 

“Can we even find the way out without him?”

Kairi pauses, but no sooner has Riku spoken than does Ventus stir for the first time. The arm around Kairi’s shoulders twitches, lifting limply and reaching out ahead of them with weakened fingers. Though his eyes remain firmly shut, a flash of light not dissimilar from the one at his chest shines out from Ventus’s palm. When it fades a keyblade all of dark chrome and gold is pointed at the door, which seems to shift and change size.

As they pass through it, feet wide for balance, Kairi hears what sounds like one of the thrones falling over. She hopes it breaks.

They arrive through the portal shaking dust out of their hair and coughing it from their throats. Somehow they’re just outside the Gummi Ship. Riku looks incredulous, but Kairi feels her face settle into a grim line. She hefts Ventus, settling him more comfortably now that his keyblade is gone, and nods once back at Riku.

They make their way aboard as the world around them continues to tremble and shift.

-

It takes approximately 2 hours and 20-some odd minutes to fight their way back to the Tower. Sora had been the one who know how to fly, and without him the get lost several times over.

Aqua meets Riku and Kairi at the landing bay, overjoyed to have Ventus back. She very nearly flies over to help them lug his comatose form off the ship. As she looks around for Sora – jokingly asking, “What, is he sleeping too?” – Kairi thinks carefully. She had known them all, however briefly, as children. To get one child back at the cost of another…she lowers Ventus gently into Aqua’s grasp and takes a step back.

It’s up to Riku to share their terrible news. He has just lost his oldest friend and yet, somehow, seeing Aqua’s newfound happiness be so thoroughly wrecked seems to lay him even lower than before. He falls silent at the end, wounded at heart and trembling. Kairi can’t let him keep on, so she takes a slow, raw breath and feels it rattle all the way down into her chest.

“Ventus hasn’t moved since then, except to help us get out of the castle.” Riku places a gentle hand at the small of her back when Kairi pauses, and she bites at her lip. Aqua thanks them both, quietly, her face a mask of sadness and understanding. One float spell later, she and the still sleeping Ventus make their slow way back into the tower.

Kairi and Riku break the news to other occupants of the Tower as they find them, though not by choice. Each telling is near the same as reliving Sora’s disappearance all over again, each reaction of disbelief or grief like a fresh wound. Kairi grows a little more distant each time she is forced to speak with someone, even as Riku shrinks behind her diminutive height more and more in sheer avoidance.

Exhausted and finally alone after making the state of their mission known, the pair eventually find themselves standing outside the door of their bunking room. It takes a long, long moment for Riku to push open the door – marked by three stars – and make his way into their shared space. 

When only Sora and he had shared the room the place had been tiny and simple, barren of furniture outside a bunk bed and small chest of drawers. With Kairi’s arrival the room had magically expanded to include a single on the other side, as well as a chest of drawers and mirror. Riku’s eyes linger on the bunk – from here he can see the top is still messy and unmade - before he turns his back on it and sits, silent, on Kairi’s bed with his head in his hands.

On autopilot, Kairi drops her gear and ops for a shower. She spends most of that time numbly staring at the single cracked tile in the otherwise immaculate room. When she returns, someone has brought them sandwiches and Riku is asleep.

It will be another ten hours before Ventus wakes up.

-

When Ventus finally does open his eyes it’s slowly, and only Aqua is there to see it. He stretches his fingers and toes and then blinks up at the impossibly painted ceiling above him in a cloudy haze. He doesn’t make as though to move or get up, instead rubbing one hand over the other from wrist to fingertip.

This, however, is not why Aqua screams. Nor is it what causes the other occupants of the tower to rush up into the back room, forgetting their tactful (or, perhaps, less painful) decision to let the pair reunite in privacy.

Aqua stands frozen in her rush to greet Ven, halted from doing so by the brightly glowing form that, as Riku, Kairi, Goofy, and Donald enter, solidifies into a familiar, spiky-headed young man.  
There, against a table covered in long cold tea and upset teacups, Sora reappears in a glittering splash of light that would seem almost majestic if he weren’t so clearly fast asleep and drooling. No one moves at first; so mired in loss, the presence of joy takes several moments to register. When it does even Donald quite nearly (or literally) throws himself towards the two near-identical boys, shouting frantically.

Cries of “Sora!” echoed by a quieter, though no less enthusiastic, call of “Ven!” rebound across the room. Kairi begins to weep despite herself, fat tears sliding down her cheeks without consent. She isn’t the only one; Donald is a verifiable mess beside her and Goofy seems capable only of smiling as widely as possible and patting his feathery friend on the shoulder. Sora’s only response to all of this commotion is to grunt and turn over. Caught up as they are, none of them notices the odd silence next to them, and in fact only recognize it when it breaks.

“…Ven?” Aqua says again, gently touching the boy’s cheek, where, unnoticed, tears have been making their way down into his shirt collar. After a moment Ventus seems to come into himself a bit and gently takes her hands. He moves to clutch them to his chest, but only squeezes them tightly before turning to look in Sora’s direction. His gaze is indecipherable.

Sora’s face bunches, in that way many of them recognize means he’s about to wake up. They would know the expression anywhere. When his eyes slide open, he blinks up at them for a moment before scrunching his eyes back together and rubbing them.

“…Where am I?” His voice comes out disoriented and croaky, but Kairi smiles over at Riku tearfully. No amount of freshly woken Sora can ruin what this moment is for them.

“You’re at Master Yen Sid’s castle, Sora. Garwsh, we’re glad to see you’re okay!”

“Who?” He answers back sleepily. Goofy is still patting a very distressed Donald’s shoulders. Sora turns to squint up at him and there’s a beat where he doesn’t react at all; just when Donald finally opens his mouth, looking perhaps as though he might pummel Sora back into a more permanent sleep, a sudden expression of alarm sweeps across Sora’s face.

All at once he’s wide awake, throwing himself into a sitting position and scrambling backwards until he’s hit the wall behind him with a solid thud. 

“Why am I here?” He cries, looking all around the room about him in disbelief, patting his chest and shoulders.

Riku, too, has jerked back – Sora’s forehead had collided with his nose. He rubs it, moaning uncharitably at the unexpected pain. Kairi giggles, for a moment, but it unexpectedly falls flat.

“We don’t know! We thought when you decided – without telling us, which, by the way, we’re going to talk about that – to bring Ventus back by tearing out your own heart…that you were gone. Riku and I were already brainstorming how to get you back, y’know? But here you are!”

Ventus moves for the first time, releasing Aqua’s hands to gingerly half-crawl over to Sora, collapsing next to him. Sora stares at him in wonder, reaching out to almost tug at a lock of blonde hair before snatching his hand back and patting his own. Ventus closes his eyes in response, a fresh tear tracking its way down his cheek.

The joyful atmosphere of the room seems to abruptly fizzle. Something isn’t right.

“…I’m sorry.” Ventus whispers, as Kairi’s smile slides off her face. Donald has stopped pretending not to cry and is staring angrily at the pair against the wall.

“…I’m so sorry. This isn’t Sora. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I’m sorry. This is Roxas.” Sora’s friends stare in dawning realization, in horror, as Ventus continues muttering these words, seeming unable to stop. Kairi can’t tell whom Ventus is apologizing to. Maybe he’s apologizing to everyone, for different things. Aqua, who has followed him to the floor, is unable to say a word; her hand has covered over her mouth.

Not Sora. This isn’t Sora. Roxas is looking all around the room while slowly slinking away from Ventus. He keeps shooting small, freaked out looks at him.

Riku moves as though to comfort him, but stops. “How is this possible?” He asks. “I don’t understand. Sora gave Ventus his heart, right? Roxas shouldn’t-“ he doesn’t say the obvious yet hurtful words. Roxas seems to take his meaning anyway, flinching and increasing his efforts to get away from all of them without flat-out running.

“My heart was shattered. Not even Sora could fix it.” Ventus says simply. “He kept part of it safe, and that’s here with me.”

Kairi and Riku sit back, hard, alongside a flabbergasted and already bawling Goofy. This time Donald is making small squawking sounds and fluttering his arms around at Goofy’s side, angered with no direction to release his fury in. “You each have a half?”

Ventus shakes his head, staring after Roxas’s escape attempts but unable to make eye contact with anyone else. Aqua, a silent but protective ally, gently places a supporting hand on his shoulder. “I think I do, but the other half of my heart isn’t here. Roxas doesn’t have it, at least, and…”

It is in this moment that another occupant of the castle finally bursts into the room. Lea hunches over, hands on knees, taking in oxygen in short gasps. “D’you know how many stairs this place has? Sorry. I was outside and - ” He stops short, possibly cluing in to the awkward atmosphere of the room. Roxas gives a sudden shout of “Axel!” and darts over to his side, where Lea startles badly and stares down at him in shock.

“Sora! I thought…you were gone? This is great! But, hey, you haven’t called me that in weeks! What’s up, buddy?” Roxas takes a swift step back, recoiling as though he’s been bitten.

Feeling impossibly worse, Kairi looks away and sucks in a great gulp of air. “This – isn’t Sora, Lea. It’s Roxas. He-“ but she stops herself from saying anything more, blinking furiously. Goofy has stopped his warbling, shaking Donald off a bit to simply wrap an arm around her shoulders. Unable to take any more Riku simply strides from the room, brushing past Lea and steadfastedly ignoring the look of hope on his face. He can’t deal with this twice in one day.

Lea watches him go, still sort of lost, unable to catch anyone’s eye at all. “But, you don’t…look…I didn’t…” For a moment, Lea flaps his arms about helplessly, before simply grabbing Roxas’s shoulders and leaning down to peer into his eyes seriously. 

“Hey? I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sorry?”

Roxas takes a deep, stuttering breath and simply falls forward, his head on Lea’s chest, overcome.

“Uh.” Lea, sensing perhaps that this is not the appropriate place for a reunion, glances guiltily over the other occupants of the room and awkwardly pats his shoulder. “Let’s go outside, yeah? We could, uh, grab some grub? Or something?”  
Roxas just nods, still leaning into his chest, probably desperate to do anything to get out of this room.

Lea slings an arm over his shoulders. “So, we’ll, uh…yeah, we’ll just, uh, go. Glad to see you’re awake, then, um…we can talk later? Okay? Okay. Um.” Still babbling, Lea leads Roxas out the door. 

When it closes with a wooden thud, the sheer silence left within is only broken by Kairi’s quiet sobs.


	3. Chapter 3

When Sora wakes up, his chest is on fire. He gasps, curling himself up as tightly as he can, clutching at the lapels of his jacket, dragging ragged breaths into sore lungs. It takes several long moments before the sharp ache beneath his palms recedes enough for him to try and take stock of where he is, exactly. He drags his head up in margins, far enough to see that he is surrounded by dimly glowing stained glass. It must be his station of awakening - he’s been here enough times to recognize it by now. It feels a little different than usual, somehow, but Sora can’t quite place why.

Last he’d known he had been with Riku and Kairi, looking for Ventus. Chest still throbbing, Sora rolls himself back into a ball feeling something like relief. Ventus must have woken up, then, and if he had thought everything through right he had probably created another nobody. Maybe even Roxas, again. Two for the price of one.

Every breath he takes seems to relieve some of tight, painful burning in his heart. After some time, during which Sora absently traces shapes into the fog he’s been inadvertently making in the glass, he decides he feels well enough to try sitting up. It takes longer than he expected – all his limbs are shaking – but when Sora finds the strength to clamber up on all fours, he takes a moment to recover before starting to feel around the cold, smooth glass. For the first time he notices a sort of buzzing sound far away in the distance, something that had started off quietly but seemed to be slowly building. There’s a new, almost palpable wrongness to this place – its always been disconcerting, here, but something just seems. Off. 

For one thing, it isn’t as easy to see as it usually is. When he had fought Roxas here, before, the whole platform had been almost dazzlingly bright. Now, as he crawls, the dim glow is drastically subdued. 

Its no surprise, then, that Sora feels the drop before he sees it. Suddenly he is tumbling halfway down into empty air, shouting in surprise, only just catching himself from falling by grasping a lucky spike of jagged glass. He pulls himself back up by his toes, firmly digging into the platform with the soles of his shoes. He comes to a rest just shy of the gap, his heart beating a wild, painful tattoo against his breastbone. His hand, sliced open wide and long even through his glove, pours blood into his pants leg. Across the whole of his station through the center is a jagged, yawning canyon. 

“You know, I’m impressed you even lasted this long. You’re nearly as weak as he is.”

On the other side of the gap, impossibly, is another person. His voice is sharp and quick, like a knife, visceral and yet familiar. Through the murky darkness, Sora catches sight of what must be golden eyes, just barely visible. Without warning the humming in the background escalates into violent screeching, so unbearable that Sora desperately clamps his hands over his ears, uncaring of the matted mess his hand is making of his hair. The ground starts to tremble and more pieces of the platform crack away into the gaping maw, dangerously close.

Sora feels a foot slip back over the edge, but cranes his neck back up anyway, fighting to catch another glimpse of the boy across the gap. He remembers this figure, somewhere in the vague fever dream of recent memory, and he feels unwilling and wary of him. 

The other boy stalks back and forth on his side of the canyon, seemingly unconcerned with either the noise or the shaking. His hands clench into fists over and over, and Sora gets the impression that the only reason he hasn’t attacked yet is because he can’t cross the barrier between them. 

“It was such a waste, Sora! You could have been so strong! You have so much to use, here! Why did you do it?” The boy stops, and his glowing eyes are twin points of illumination in the darkening room.

“Why did you give him all your light?”

-

Roxas hiccups, a bubble of laughter breaking though his hysteria. He’s sitting outside, on the steps up to the tower, holding his head between his knees. Axel – or Lea, now? – sits awkwardly next to him, occasionally patting him on the back in lieu of knowing what else to do.

“They all thought I was Sora! And Sora’s gone!” His hair spikes, new and unfamiliar, against his cheek. No matter how unnatural it feels, he refuses to lift his head. Lea had been casting uncertain glances at his back all the way down the tower, and he doesn’t want to see it again.

“You do…look like him.” Axel says uncomfortably. He’s been tearing up the grass beside the steps, enough that it has gathered in a pile over his boot. Somewhere in his head, behind all this, he’s thinking about how he could tear up all the grass. Or even burn it! It wouldn’t matter.

The next day, the Tower’s magic would have put it all back the way it was. Like he’d never been there.

Roxas stares, pensive, as a glowing yellow and green cloud passes low at the edge of the treeline. “But that other guy looks like me. Like I did.”

“Ventus.”

“Right. Ventus.” Though Lea can’t see it, Roxas feels his expression twist. He wonders if it looks weird on Sora’s face. “Sora knew about him. I was asleep, so I only know a little.” , _God,_ he realizes. _Not even my voice sounds the same._

There’s more commotion happening somewhere upstairs. Lea can hear it through one of the unshuttered windows but he ignores it. “So, uh…Roxas, I –“

“…just wanted to live. I just wanted to live! To be my own person! I didn’t ask Sora to do this! But now he’s gone, and he’s left me with his stupid face! The idiot! What am I supposed to do, looking like him?!”

Although the words were furious and bitter, they had a telling roughness. When Roxas finally lifted his head, Lea wasn’t surprised to see that he was crying. 

“I didn’t want Sora to disappear.” His voice was suddenly so small, and sad. There was a full beat of silence. Lea abandoned his grass pile; between one blink and the next, it disappeared and the grass at his side seemed to look fresh and unmarred once again. 

He could feel Roxas staring at him, but he had no idea what to say.

Finally, Lea rallied and put a commiserating hand on Roxas’s shoulder.

“Hey. These guys are always losing and finding each other. I bet they’re gearin’ up right now to go and look for him!” Roxas rubbed at his eyes, trying to stem the flow. Now that’d he’d started, it was harder to stop. 

“And as far as looks go I bet a trim and some bleach will set that right, don’t you think? Easy as pie.”

Roxas gaped at him, so surprised the he forgot to keep crying. Lea couldn’t help but laugh. These kids always seemed to think the answers to their problems had to be so complicated! Sometimes, all it really took to find the solution was some old-fashioned common sense.

If he had had some when he was younger…

Behind them, the door to the Mysterious Tower suddenly burst open with a scrape of wood on wood. Ventus was just within the doorway, eyes shining with a strange, feverish light. He leaned against the frame, gasping, as a bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. “I feel him!” He yelled hoarsely.

Axel half-rose, casting a worried eye at Roxas’s flinch. Damn it! He had just perked the guy up. “What?”

As Ventus stumbled forward, heedless of a worried call from Aqua somewhere behind him, he only had eyes for Roxas. “I feel him. Sora.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait! My health has been on the fritz this year and I was busy graduating. Chapter 4 should be up soon, parts of it are written!


End file.
